Constellating Public Memory and Amnesia Rhetorics
Through an Art Education Lens
By Kate Luke and Jaylin Mendez
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Framework
Overview of Topics & Defintions
The focus of this project is to constellate the rhetorical concepts of memory and amnesia with discussion of remembrance as a radical act. We aim to highlight the impact of public memory commemoration and historical erasure through the use of artistic and educational representations.
Our scholarly subtopics are as follows, and can be found on the pages Queer Art & Erased Lynchings: Art as a commemoration of its erasure of complex histories such as slavery Queer art as radical remembrance & representations of queer counterpublic memories
Rhetorical Actor
Rhetorical Agent
Memory
Collective Memory
Amnesia
Radical Remembrance
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Constellating Queer Art
Radical remembrance & counterpublic memories
Queer art is important in shaping public memory by reflecting the complexities of queer identities and histories, particularly in the wake of significant events like Stonewall, movements like the AIDS Crisis, etc. Queer art has often been repressed, hidden, “closeted”---part of the beauty of its remembrance is making visible what was once not. Queer history has in part been preserved through queer art, as individuals of the community channel their experiences into their work. By producing, they are not only remembering, they are radically protecting against erasure.
+ANALYSIS
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Erased Lynchings
Confronting amnesia with erasure
E.J Ore highlights how American nationality is dependent on the erasure of lynchings in order to maintain an image of freedom and equality. Specifically, she notes that the United States consistently attempts to minimize lynchings by victimizing whitehood and criminalizing people of color. In this case, memory acts as a rhetorical actor– a puppet for white Americans to “sanitize” lynchings from history, despite the historical normalization of racial lynchings in the 20th century. However, Ken Gonzales-Days attempts to disrupt this historical amnesia through his exhibit Erased Lynchings. The exhibit features a series of photographs of lynchings– however, the victims’ bodies are removed from the image, leaving behind crowds and scenery of where the lynching occured. The pictures, then, depict the white picket fences symbolic of white safety and celebrations surrounding the removal of “the other”. Gonzales confronts amnesia through erasure to make the audience address the violence of lynching and the lack of discourse surrounding racial violence in modern settings. In other words, Gonzales shifts memory from being a rhetorical actor under the conditions of amnesia to a rhetorical agent for radical remembrance.
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Questions Raised
Affordances
Memory can challenge narratives that are inaccurate. For instance, slavery is taught as an economic exchange rather than a system to maintain unequal power struggles or perpetuate colonialism in modern textbooks. Revisiting stories of former enslaved people reveals the true intention behind slavery. Similarly, the reappraisal of queer media and experience combats a popular homophobic stance against the community by highlighting queer identity has been historically relevant for centuries-- it is not simply a "trend".
What can we learn about remembrance and collective memory from marginalized groups through art? How can we avoid romanticizing complex histories through an (aestheticized) art lens?
What role does the relationship to place and space play in individual and collective memory? Which spaces are shared, and which aredivided?
How have visual, written and aural archives been used in art to reignite personal and collective memories?
Limitations
Evaluating & Interrogating Memory
Memory is subject to larger public narratives and/or may cherry pick specific topics. For example, the western canon is being used to support right wing ideology-- this strays from the original meaning of historical documents and narratives.
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Concept Relationships
Individual memory develops alongside and from collective memory which then serves to inform and affect public memory and public amnesia & erasure. This amnesia/erasure is combatted with radical remembrance and counterpublic manifestations. Ultimately, all the pieces are patchworked together, like in the above painting.
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Bibliography
Quoted Sources
Ott, B.L., Blair, C., & Dickinson, G. (2010). Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Ramsey, Shawn D. “The Voices of Counsel: Women and Civic Rhetoric in the Middle Ages.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 5, 2012, pp. 472–89. JSTOR, Ribbat, C. (2001). Queer and straight photography. Amerikastudien / American Studies, 46(1), 27–39. Rosenthal, G. (2017). Make Roanoke queer again: Community history and urban change in a southern city. The Public Historian, 39(1), 35–60. Ryan, H. (2014). Notes on the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1(2), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.1.2.0079 Soboleva, K. M., & Morgan, N. C. (2019). Art after Stonewall, 1969–1989: Grey Art Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Museum. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 6(3), 189–212. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.6.3.0189 Van Buskirk, J. (1992). BETWEEN THE LINES: The often fruitless quest for gay & lesbian materials. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 11(4), 167–170. VanHaitsma, P. (2019). Digital LGBTQ archives as sites o public memory and pedagogy. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 22(2), 253–280. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.2.0253
Sloane, T. O. (2001). Encyclopedia of rhetoric. Oxford University Press. Sonnenberg, A. (2021–2023). Pall (We should be home by now) [Steel, glazed porcelain, glass beads, found fabrics, wire]. Newfields, Indianapolis, United States of America.
Vetter, M. (2025, October 27). The message is the medium: A third contemporary art refresh. Discovernewfields.org; Newfields.
Watson, J. L. (2022). Bodies out of time: Sculpting queer poetics and queering classical sculpture in the poetry of C. P. Cavafy. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 29(2), 190–213.
Arckens, E. (2016). “In this told-backward biography”: Marianne Moore against survival in her queer archival poetry. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 44(1/2), 111–127.
Carroll, R. J. (2018). Can you feel it?: Beauty and queer of color politics in Looking for Langston. Criticism, 60(4), 487–509.
Cavafy, C. P. (1992). C.P. Cavafy: Collected poems (Revised ed., E. Keeley & P. Sherrard, Trans.; G. Savidis, Ed.). Princeton University Press.
Gonzalez-Torres, F. (1991). Untitled (L.A.) [Installation: green candies in clear wrappers, endless supply]. Newfields, Indianapolis, United States of America.
Halbwachs, M. (1976). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Mouton.
James, E. (2016). Screwing the assembly line: Queerness, art-making and Mandela’s Mercedes-Benz. Kronos, (42), 56–70.
Moore, M. (1980). The complete poems. Macmillan/Viking.
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, (26), 7–24.
Referenced Sources
Dunn, T. R. (2010). Remembering Matthew Shepard: Violence, identity, and queer counterpublic memories. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 13(4), 611–651. Gonzales-Day, Ken. Erased Lynchings. 2006. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. ORE, E. J. (2019). Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity. University Press of Mississippi.
Challenging Collective Memory by means of Performance
"Art has an important role to play in the space that exceeds the political relevance of the strike for understanding histories of labour and struggle in southern Africa. Bringing beds into closer view illuminates the playful creativity of work, political activity and the writing of history. My substituting 'Red Assembly' for 'Bed Assembly' reminds us of the sensuality of labour and demonstrates how well the different 'beds' in Red captured the oxymoronic character of work that's sexy... While the very idea of imagining hundreds of men sleeping on beds together would mark the queer limit of remembering the sleep-in either as a strike or an ordinary third shift, the beds offer an important space to contemplate the politics of the 1990 event alongside its aesthetics."
Find out more about artist Simon Gush's "Red" Exhibit by clicking the link below.
From the article: Screwing the Assembly Line: Queerness, Art-Making and Mandela's Mercedes-Benz by Elliot James
Amnesia by means of Aestheticizing
PART 1
"The potential conflict between beautiful art and political action is a valid concern. Aesthetic choices in the midst of life-and-death political crisis matter profoundly. Faced with homophobic violence perpetrated and propagated at the highest levels of government and prestigious cultural echelons, one might understandably worry that beautiful art runs the risk of romanticizing a crisis which is anything but beautiful."
Trailer for the 1989 film Looking for Langston
From the article: Can You Feel It?: Beauty and Queer of Color Politics in Looking for Langston by R. J. Carroll
watch the movie here
We set out to explore who, or which groups of people, control public memory, and therefore dictate what is remembered. It is evident that some voices are heard and others are not in collective memory processes.
Rewriting by means of Queering
“Through his queer poetics, the poet-as-sculptor mines the marble of the classical past and re-sculpts it into the poetry of the twentieth century, reorienting both content and mode as queer. Thus, he is able to destabilize, or at least rearticulate, the meaning of classical sculpture for his own poetic identity formation, simultaneously rendering his poetry, poetics and persona as queer. Forster tells us that Cavafy stood, statue-like, ‘absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe’. From this stance Cavafy gazes at a present in which those ‘made like him’ find little foothold; he conceives of a mode which is ‘attentive to the past for the purposes of critiquing [this] present’, and with this, he sculpts his queer poetics.”
The poetry of Cavafy shows art as a powerful vehicle for conveying and memorializing queer identities, transforming the past into a means of envisioning a future where such identities can be celebrated openly.
From the article: Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy by J. L. Watson
A rhetorical actor is a participant that perpetuates the discourse that has been shaped by the rhetorical agent. The key difference is that rhetorical actors often lack the authority that rhetorical agents employ.
Rhetorical Actor
Memory, and its affordances, are shaped by other rhetorical concepts like embodiment, identity, audience, and counterstories.
Ken Gonzales-Days The Wonder Gaze: Lynching of Thomas Thurmond & John Holmes, Saint James Park, San Jose, CA,1933) Erased Lynching Series, Group #1, 2006
This piece serves to be another angle of the night of the lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes. It is clear how much of a spectacle the lynching of these men were. The crowd is large, so much that it appears to be more of a festivity rather than a crime scene.
Ken Gonzales-Day East First Street (St. James Park) Erased Lynchings Series I, 2006
By erasing the lynched individual, Gonzales is able to draw attention to the lynchers. The scene is apalling- the crowd, the spectacle, and the buzz of those photographed highlight the normality of lynchings. American nationality framed lynchings as rare, tragic occurences, but the photo shows otherwise.
The shared knowledge, experience, and narratives of a community. Sociologist Maurice Halbwachs describes it as a mosaic of shared experiences and narratives within a social group or culture.
Collective Memory
A rhetorical agent intentionally (and rhetorically) influences and constructs public discourse and thinking. Rhetorical agents include: individuals, communities, objects, artwork, etc
Rhetorical Agent
Halbwachs states that "collective and individual memories seem to represent unity rather than disparity because personal memories are viewed through the perspective of a group or collective whose presence is essential for triggering and validating instances of remembrance.”
The intentional act of preserving and re-centering damaged histories that have been disrupted by dominant power structures. This rhetorical intervention reclaims agency for those the communities and cultures of those who have suppressed.
Radical Remembrance
Resplendent Dreams: Reawakening the Rococo Newfields exhibit information
Radical Remembrance by means of Beautifying
"Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived."
Pall (We Should Be Home By Now) by Anthony Sonnenberg on view now at Newfields
From Between Memory and History... by Pierre Noraby
On the surface, floral still lives reflect the Rococo love of indulgence, but they were also intended as memento mori---reminders of the inevitability of death. Anthony makes the connection explicit in this ceramic sculpture, which takes the form of a human shaped coffin covered in flowers. Growing up in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, Anthony believed "pleasure [was] always accompanied by the spector of death." [This piece] links pleasure and death to its references to the still-life genre and memento mori, while also suggesting the possibility of beauty and life emerging from tragedy.
Acknowledging Memory Anxiety by means of Archiving
PART 2
"The queer quest for historical detail and accuracy allows for a return not from but to the past. Even more, the queer-specific "overwhelming desire to feel historical ," as Christopher Nealon indicates, implies a desire to make public and collective what is often painfully private. The use of archives, as private acts made public, are then perfect mediums of expression for the queer poet, even if this feverish expression of a queer identity results simultaneously in the concealment of sexually secret passions."
Excerpts from Marianne Moore's poem "Glory," (1960) about preserving cultural inheritence & public art spaces.
From the article: "In This Told-Backward Biography": Marianne Moore Against Survival in Her Queer Archival Poetry by Elien Arckens
Marianne Moore's poem "Silence" secrecy not equating total silence and erasure of opinon or memory.
Acknowledging Memory Anxiety by means of Archiving
PART 1
"Moore does not look at the past as a talisman for the future, and her queer archival poem-collections attest to anxiety over--- rather than faith in--- inheritance, continuity, and memory… As I will indicate, hers is a poetics that opposes the legacy of the closet and queer literature's subsequent urge to "come out," "open the box," and "break the silence" via personal testimonies.”
From the article: "In This Told-Backward Biography": Marianne Moore Against Survival in Her Queer Archival Poetry by Elien Arckens
Rather than waiting for a proper trial, a mob of people kidnapped a group of four men who were arrested under suspicions of their involvement in a crime. This mob, which consisted of around three hundered people, took it upon themselves to hang these four men prior to their conviction. The absence of the mob and the lynched leaves an unsuspecting white picket fence in view- one that is symbolic of the "American dream" and middle-class status. The audience is left to ask "what ideals and values are being privledged in this photograph?"
Ken Gonzales–Day Lynched by a mob of about 300: William Null, Garland Stemler, Louis Moreno, Laurence H. Johnson, Yreka, CA, 1895 Erased Lynchings Set III
Memory allows individuals and communities to interpret and define the past. Specifically, memory serves as a rhetorical agent that acts to influence its audience through the recollection of history. However, when it is controlled by dominant power structures with the intent to shape discourse and public thinking, memory serves as a rhetorical actor.
Memory
Two African-American men, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, were arrested under suspicions of their involvement of a crime. However, news of their arrest caught the attention of the public, and a lynching was planned in order to "bring justice". From the erasure of the men in the photo and the lack of their civil protections through due process, the notion arises that lynched individuals are not American; therefore, black, latin, and other people of color are not American.
Ken Gonzales-Day Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith, Marion, IN. 1930 Erased Lynchings Set III
Amnesia by means of Aestheticizing
PART 2
Who is doing the memorislizing? Who is putting the filter?
In “Can You Feel It?: Beauty and Queer of Color Politics in Looking for Langston,” Carroll offers an example of looking at queer art (particularly the 1989 film, Looking for Langston) as a radical, political act— drawing in questions of ethical remembrance and the avoidance of romanticizing a community’s difficult, and complex past. She warns against overlooking the historical context of racism and homophobia in favor of celebrating only the aesthetics.
Ultimately, Carroll’s piece not only provides further evidence of queer art’s influence on a constellated collective memory, but also broadens the scope. I now not only see public remembrance through queer art as subversive, but I also see the potential conflict and harm if that subversion is too beautified. Carroll allows her analysis a wider appeal, a framework applicable to all kinds of public memory in all forms of preservation: “...an analysis of the film and its staging of aesthetic judgment gives us a model for understanding beauty, which may assist us in conceptualizing beauty’s role in politics more broadly.” (489-490).
Amnesia occurs when dominant power structures move to erase narratives in order to influence public discourse and thinking; the intentional public rewriting of history to exclude certain voices, stories, or values.
Amnesia
Survival by means of Lieux de Memoire
PART 1
“Lieux de memoire originates with the sense that there is no spontaneous memory, that we must deliberately create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies, and notarize bills because such activities no longer occur naturally. The defense, by certain minorities, of a privileged memory that has retreated to jealously protected enclaves in this sense intensely illuminates the truth of hieux de memoire-that without commemorative vigilance, history would soon sweep them away. We buttress our identities upon such bastions, but if what they defended were not threatened, there would be no need to build them. Conversely, if the memories that they enclosed were to be set free they would be useless; if history did not besiege memory, deforming and transforming it, penetrating and petrifying it, there would be no lieux de memoire. Indeed, it is this very push and pull that produces lieux de memoire-moments of history torn away from the movement of history, then returned; no longer quite life, not yet death, like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded.”
From the article Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire by Pierre Noraby
Analysis
Struggles of omission from history and censorship of expression have been imposed upon many queer artists who have attempted to gain recognition. Lots of (secretly) queer artists in the past who did manage some acclaim did so in part through hiding the influence of their embodied, lived experiences in their work. People love to love queer art until they find out it has “gay implications” or was created by a queer individual—we see this a lot in music and literature. Visual art has an even harder time even getting its foot in the public sphere, and collective memory. Queer art and history projects/exhibits offer a chance for not just remembrance, but reclamation, too. They can—and are being used—to reshape public memory, and therefore society’s impressions, associations, and stereotypes of the queer community and its diverse people. By challenging dominant accounts and providing alternative narratives of remembrance, queer art contributes to queer counterpublic memories. To a larger extent, this framework of thinking can be applied to any community or counterpublic that demands to be rediscovered and represented in public memory.
Survival by means of Lieux de Memoire
PART 2
Félix González-Torres’s Untitled (L.A.) Tis currently on loan to Newfields in Indianapolis. I had the unexpected pleasure and honor of witnessing this piece in person on my 25th birthday---a birthday I wasn't sure I would get to. From the Newfields website on this new addition to their standing exhibit, The Message is the Medium: "[Introduces] important voices to the conversation and offers new opportunities to connect with key movements and ideas in contemporary art... González-Torres’s conceptual work... consists of over two hundred pounds of green candies, continually refreshed as visitors take individual pieces from the pile."
Constellating Public Memory and Amnesia Rhetorics Through an Art Education Lens
Kate Luke
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Transcript
Constellating Public Memory and Amnesia Rhetorics Through an Art Education Lens
By Kate Luke and Jaylin Mendez
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Framework
Overview of Topics & Defintions
The focus of this project is to constellate the rhetorical concepts of memory and amnesia with discussion of remembrance as a radical act. We aim to highlight the impact of public memory commemoration and historical erasure through the use of artistic and educational representations.
Our scholarly subtopics are as follows, and can be found on the pages Queer Art & Erased Lynchings: Art as a commemoration of its erasure of complex histories such as slavery Queer art as radical remembrance & representations of queer counterpublic memories
Rhetorical Actor
Rhetorical Agent
Memory
Collective Memory
Amnesia
Radical Remembrance
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Constellating Queer Art
Radical remembrance & counterpublic memories
Queer art is important in shaping public memory by reflecting the complexities of queer identities and histories, particularly in the wake of significant events like Stonewall, movements like the AIDS Crisis, etc. Queer art has often been repressed, hidden, “closeted”---part of the beauty of its remembrance is making visible what was once not. Queer history has in part been preserved through queer art, as individuals of the community channel their experiences into their work. By producing, they are not only remembering, they are radically protecting against erasure.
+ANALYSIS
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Erased Lynchings
Confronting amnesia with erasure
E.J Ore highlights how American nationality is dependent on the erasure of lynchings in order to maintain an image of freedom and equality. Specifically, she notes that the United States consistently attempts to minimize lynchings by victimizing whitehood and criminalizing people of color. In this case, memory acts as a rhetorical actor– a puppet for white Americans to “sanitize” lynchings from history, despite the historical normalization of racial lynchings in the 20th century. However, Ken Gonzales-Days attempts to disrupt this historical amnesia through his exhibit Erased Lynchings. The exhibit features a series of photographs of lynchings– however, the victims’ bodies are removed from the image, leaving behind crowds and scenery of where the lynching occured. The pictures, then, depict the white picket fences symbolic of white safety and celebrations surrounding the removal of “the other”. Gonzales confronts amnesia through erasure to make the audience address the violence of lynching and the lack of discourse surrounding racial violence in modern settings. In other words, Gonzales shifts memory from being a rhetorical actor under the conditions of amnesia to a rhetorical agent for radical remembrance.
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Questions Raised
Affordances
Memory can challenge narratives that are inaccurate. For instance, slavery is taught as an economic exchange rather than a system to maintain unequal power struggles or perpetuate colonialism in modern textbooks. Revisiting stories of former enslaved people reveals the true intention behind slavery. Similarly, the reappraisal of queer media and experience combats a popular homophobic stance against the community by highlighting queer identity has been historically relevant for centuries-- it is not simply a "trend".
What can we learn about remembrance and collective memory from marginalized groups through art? How can we avoid romanticizing complex histories through an (aestheticized) art lens? What role does the relationship to place and space play in individual and collective memory? Which spaces are shared, and which aredivided? How have visual, written and aural archives been used in art to reignite personal and collective memories?
Limitations
Evaluating & Interrogating Memory
Memory is subject to larger public narratives and/or may cherry pick specific topics. For example, the western canon is being used to support right wing ideology-- this strays from the original meaning of historical documents and narratives.
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Concept Relationships
Individual memory develops alongside and from collective memory which then serves to inform and affect public memory and public amnesia & erasure. This amnesia/erasure is combatted with radical remembrance and counterpublic manifestations. Ultimately, all the pieces are patchworked together, like in the above painting.
Evaluation
Erased Lynchings
Bibliography
Queer Art
Relationships
Framework
Bibliography
Quoted Sources
Ott, B.L., Blair, C., & Dickinson, G. (2010). Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Ramsey, Shawn D. “The Voices of Counsel: Women and Civic Rhetoric in the Middle Ages.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 5, 2012, pp. 472–89. JSTOR, Ribbat, C. (2001). Queer and straight photography. Amerikastudien / American Studies, 46(1), 27–39. Rosenthal, G. (2017). Make Roanoke queer again: Community history and urban change in a southern city. The Public Historian, 39(1), 35–60. Ryan, H. (2014). Notes on the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1(2), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.1.2.0079 Soboleva, K. M., & Morgan, N. C. (2019). Art after Stonewall, 1969–1989: Grey Art Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Museum. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 6(3), 189–212. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.6.3.0189 Van Buskirk, J. (1992). BETWEEN THE LINES: The often fruitless quest for gay & lesbian materials. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 11(4), 167–170. VanHaitsma, P. (2019). Digital LGBTQ archives as sites o public memory and pedagogy. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 22(2), 253–280. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.2.0253
Sloane, T. O. (2001). Encyclopedia of rhetoric. Oxford University Press. Sonnenberg, A. (2021–2023). Pall (We should be home by now) [Steel, glazed porcelain, glass beads, found fabrics, wire]. Newfields, Indianapolis, United States of America. Vetter, M. (2025, October 27). The message is the medium: A third contemporary art refresh. Discovernewfields.org; Newfields. Watson, J. L. (2022). Bodies out of time: Sculpting queer poetics and queering classical sculpture in the poetry of C. P. Cavafy. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 29(2), 190–213.
Arckens, E. (2016). “In this told-backward biography”: Marianne Moore against survival in her queer archival poetry. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 44(1/2), 111–127. Carroll, R. J. (2018). Can you feel it?: Beauty and queer of color politics in Looking for Langston. Criticism, 60(4), 487–509. Cavafy, C. P. (1992). C.P. Cavafy: Collected poems (Revised ed., E. Keeley & P. Sherrard, Trans.; G. Savidis, Ed.). Princeton University Press. Gonzalez-Torres, F. (1991). Untitled (L.A.) [Installation: green candies in clear wrappers, endless supply]. Newfields, Indianapolis, United States of America. Halbwachs, M. (1976). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Mouton. James, E. (2016). Screwing the assembly line: Queerness, art-making and Mandela’s Mercedes-Benz. Kronos, (42), 56–70. Moore, M. (1980). The complete poems. Macmillan/Viking. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, (26), 7–24.
Referenced Sources
Dunn, T. R. (2010). Remembering Matthew Shepard: Violence, identity, and queer counterpublic memories. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 13(4), 611–651. Gonzales-Day, Ken. Erased Lynchings. 2006. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. ORE, E. J. (2019). Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity. University Press of Mississippi.
Challenging Collective Memory by means of Performance
"Art has an important role to play in the space that exceeds the political relevance of the strike for understanding histories of labour and struggle in southern Africa. Bringing beds into closer view illuminates the playful creativity of work, political activity and the writing of history. My substituting 'Red Assembly' for 'Bed Assembly' reminds us of the sensuality of labour and demonstrates how well the different 'beds' in Red captured the oxymoronic character of work that's sexy... While the very idea of imagining hundreds of men sleeping on beds together would mark the queer limit of remembering the sleep-in either as a strike or an ordinary third shift, the beds offer an important space to contemplate the politics of the 1990 event alongside its aesthetics."
Find out more about artist Simon Gush's "Red" Exhibit by clicking the link below.
From the article: Screwing the Assembly Line: Queerness, Art-Making and Mandela's Mercedes-Benz by Elliot James
Amnesia by means of Aestheticizing
PART 1
"The potential conflict between beautiful art and political action is a valid concern. Aesthetic choices in the midst of life-and-death political crisis matter profoundly. Faced with homophobic violence perpetrated and propagated at the highest levels of government and prestigious cultural echelons, one might understandably worry that beautiful art runs the risk of romanticizing a crisis which is anything but beautiful."
Trailer for the 1989 film Looking for Langston
From the article: Can You Feel It?: Beauty and Queer of Color Politics in Looking for Langston by R. J. Carroll
watch the movie here
We set out to explore who, or which groups of people, control public memory, and therefore dictate what is remembered. It is evident that some voices are heard and others are not in collective memory processes.
Rewriting by means of Queering
“Through his queer poetics, the poet-as-sculptor mines the marble of the classical past and re-sculpts it into the poetry of the twentieth century, reorienting both content and mode as queer. Thus, he is able to destabilize, or at least rearticulate, the meaning of classical sculpture for his own poetic identity formation, simultaneously rendering his poetry, poetics and persona as queer. Forster tells us that Cavafy stood, statue-like, ‘absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe’. From this stance Cavafy gazes at a present in which those ‘made like him’ find little foothold; he conceives of a mode which is ‘attentive to the past for the purposes of critiquing [this] present’, and with this, he sculpts his queer poetics.”
The poetry of Cavafy shows art as a powerful vehicle for conveying and memorializing queer identities, transforming the past into a means of envisioning a future where such identities can be celebrated openly.
From the article: Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy by J. L. Watson
A rhetorical actor is a participant that perpetuates the discourse that has been shaped by the rhetorical agent. The key difference is that rhetorical actors often lack the authority that rhetorical agents employ.
Rhetorical Actor
Memory, and its affordances, are shaped by other rhetorical concepts like embodiment, identity, audience, and counterstories.
Ken Gonzales-Days The Wonder Gaze: Lynching of Thomas Thurmond & John Holmes, Saint James Park, San Jose, CA,1933) Erased Lynching Series, Group #1, 2006
This piece serves to be another angle of the night of the lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes. It is clear how much of a spectacle the lynching of these men were. The crowd is large, so much that it appears to be more of a festivity rather than a crime scene.
Ken Gonzales-Day East First Street (St. James Park) Erased Lynchings Series I, 2006
By erasing the lynched individual, Gonzales is able to draw attention to the lynchers. The scene is apalling- the crowd, the spectacle, and the buzz of those photographed highlight the normality of lynchings. American nationality framed lynchings as rare, tragic occurences, but the photo shows otherwise.
The shared knowledge, experience, and narratives of a community. Sociologist Maurice Halbwachs describes it as a mosaic of shared experiences and narratives within a social group or culture.
Collective Memory
A rhetorical agent intentionally (and rhetorically) influences and constructs public discourse and thinking. Rhetorical agents include: individuals, communities, objects, artwork, etc
Rhetorical Agent
Halbwachs states that "collective and individual memories seem to represent unity rather than disparity because personal memories are viewed through the perspective of a group or collective whose presence is essential for triggering and validating instances of remembrance.”
The intentional act of preserving and re-centering damaged histories that have been disrupted by dominant power structures. This rhetorical intervention reclaims agency for those the communities and cultures of those who have suppressed.
Radical Remembrance
Resplendent Dreams: Reawakening the Rococo Newfields exhibit information
Radical Remembrance by means of Beautifying
"Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived."
Pall (We Should Be Home By Now) by Anthony Sonnenberg on view now at Newfields
From Between Memory and History... by Pierre Noraby
On the surface, floral still lives reflect the Rococo love of indulgence, but they were also intended as memento mori---reminders of the inevitability of death. Anthony makes the connection explicit in this ceramic sculpture, which takes the form of a human shaped coffin covered in flowers. Growing up in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, Anthony believed "pleasure [was] always accompanied by the spector of death." [This piece] links pleasure and death to its references to the still-life genre and memento mori, while also suggesting the possibility of beauty and life emerging from tragedy.
Acknowledging Memory Anxiety by means of Archiving
PART 2
"The queer quest for historical detail and accuracy allows for a return not from but to the past. Even more, the queer-specific "overwhelming desire to feel historical ," as Christopher Nealon indicates, implies a desire to make public and collective what is often painfully private. The use of archives, as private acts made public, are then perfect mediums of expression for the queer poet, even if this feverish expression of a queer identity results simultaneously in the concealment of sexually secret passions."
Excerpts from Marianne Moore's poem "Glory," (1960) about preserving cultural inheritence & public art spaces.
From the article: "In This Told-Backward Biography": Marianne Moore Against Survival in Her Queer Archival Poetry by Elien Arckens
Marianne Moore's poem "Silence" secrecy not equating total silence and erasure of opinon or memory.
Acknowledging Memory Anxiety by means of Archiving
PART 1
"Moore does not look at the past as a talisman for the future, and her queer archival poem-collections attest to anxiety over--- rather than faith in--- inheritance, continuity, and memory… As I will indicate, hers is a poetics that opposes the legacy of the closet and queer literature's subsequent urge to "come out," "open the box," and "break the silence" via personal testimonies.”
From the article: "In This Told-Backward Biography": Marianne Moore Against Survival in Her Queer Archival Poetry by Elien Arckens
Rather than waiting for a proper trial, a mob of people kidnapped a group of four men who were arrested under suspicions of their involvement in a crime. This mob, which consisted of around three hundered people, took it upon themselves to hang these four men prior to their conviction. The absence of the mob and the lynched leaves an unsuspecting white picket fence in view- one that is symbolic of the "American dream" and middle-class status. The audience is left to ask "what ideals and values are being privledged in this photograph?"
Ken Gonzales–Day Lynched by a mob of about 300: William Null, Garland Stemler, Louis Moreno, Laurence H. Johnson, Yreka, CA, 1895 Erased Lynchings Set III
Memory allows individuals and communities to interpret and define the past. Specifically, memory serves as a rhetorical agent that acts to influence its audience through the recollection of history. However, when it is controlled by dominant power structures with the intent to shape discourse and public thinking, memory serves as a rhetorical actor.
Memory
Two African-American men, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, were arrested under suspicions of their involvement of a crime. However, news of their arrest caught the attention of the public, and a lynching was planned in order to "bring justice". From the erasure of the men in the photo and the lack of their civil protections through due process, the notion arises that lynched individuals are not American; therefore, black, latin, and other people of color are not American.
Ken Gonzales-Day Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith, Marion, IN. 1930 Erased Lynchings Set III
Amnesia by means of Aestheticizing
PART 2
Who is doing the memorislizing? Who is putting the filter?
In “Can You Feel It?: Beauty and Queer of Color Politics in Looking for Langston,” Carroll offers an example of looking at queer art (particularly the 1989 film, Looking for Langston) as a radical, political act— drawing in questions of ethical remembrance and the avoidance of romanticizing a community’s difficult, and complex past. She warns against overlooking the historical context of racism and homophobia in favor of celebrating only the aesthetics.
Ultimately, Carroll’s piece not only provides further evidence of queer art’s influence on a constellated collective memory, but also broadens the scope. I now not only see public remembrance through queer art as subversive, but I also see the potential conflict and harm if that subversion is too beautified. Carroll allows her analysis a wider appeal, a framework applicable to all kinds of public memory in all forms of preservation: “...an analysis of the film and its staging of aesthetic judgment gives us a model for understanding beauty, which may assist us in conceptualizing beauty’s role in politics more broadly.” (489-490).
Amnesia occurs when dominant power structures move to erase narratives in order to influence public discourse and thinking; the intentional public rewriting of history to exclude certain voices, stories, or values.
Amnesia
Survival by means of Lieux de Memoire
PART 1
“Lieux de memoire originates with the sense that there is no spontaneous memory, that we must deliberately create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies, and notarize bills because such activities no longer occur naturally. The defense, by certain minorities, of a privileged memory that has retreated to jealously protected enclaves in this sense intensely illuminates the truth of hieux de memoire-that without commemorative vigilance, history would soon sweep them away. We buttress our identities upon such bastions, but if what they defended were not threatened, there would be no need to build them. Conversely, if the memories that they enclosed were to be set free they would be useless; if history did not besiege memory, deforming and transforming it, penetrating and petrifying it, there would be no lieux de memoire. Indeed, it is this very push and pull that produces lieux de memoire-moments of history torn away from the movement of history, then returned; no longer quite life, not yet death, like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded.”
From the article Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire by Pierre Noraby
Analysis
Struggles of omission from history and censorship of expression have been imposed upon many queer artists who have attempted to gain recognition. Lots of (secretly) queer artists in the past who did manage some acclaim did so in part through hiding the influence of their embodied, lived experiences in their work. People love to love queer art until they find out it has “gay implications” or was created by a queer individual—we see this a lot in music and literature. Visual art has an even harder time even getting its foot in the public sphere, and collective memory. Queer art and history projects/exhibits offer a chance for not just remembrance, but reclamation, too. They can—and are being used—to reshape public memory, and therefore society’s impressions, associations, and stereotypes of the queer community and its diverse people. By challenging dominant accounts and providing alternative narratives of remembrance, queer art contributes to queer counterpublic memories. To a larger extent, this framework of thinking can be applied to any community or counterpublic that demands to be rediscovered and represented in public memory.
Survival by means of Lieux de Memoire
PART 2
Félix González-Torres’s Untitled (L.A.) Tis currently on loan to Newfields in Indianapolis. I had the unexpected pleasure and honor of witnessing this piece in person on my 25th birthday---a birthday I wasn't sure I would get to. From the Newfields website on this new addition to their standing exhibit, The Message is the Medium: "[Introduces] important voices to the conversation and offers new opportunities to connect with key movements and ideas in contemporary art... González-Torres’s conceptual work... consists of over two hundred pounds of green candies, continually refreshed as visitors take individual pieces from the pile."